Renny (The Henchmen MC 6)

"Has it ever occurred to you, Renny, that we are more than our pasts? Our fucked up childhoods? That that is only a small part of the whole picture? All the other parts- my friends, my travels, my preferences, my job- those things make up a bigger part of who I am than the fact that my parents don't fucking love me!"

That last part was said on a scream that had the guys at the gates stop pretending to not be listening and fully gave us their attention as I slammed my hands into his chest, pushing him back against the gate.

"I think you're fooling yourself if you don't think that them not loving you doesn't have a huge, life-altering impact on your life."

"Oh for fuck's sake, Renny. It hasn't stunted me. I love people. I love Lo and Janie and Malcolm and Ashley and..."

"You love people platonically," he cut me off. "You don't love anyone intimately."

I felt myself jerk back from that, from the truth of it.

Because, fact of the matter was, I did love people who, if my love was not reciprocated or if their love was stripped from me, it wouldn't devastate me. It was an easy love.

"Have you ever been in love, Mina?" he asked, knowing damn well he knew the answer to that already. "Or have you been too afraid that no matter what you did, they could never love you back?"

"I have never been with someone long enough to love them," I defended, knowing it was true. It was always easy, casual. Not quite one-night stands, but not quite relationships either. Dalliances. Flings. That was what I allowed men to be to me. If I was able to trivialize their presence in my life, it made it easier to refuse to allow my feelings toward them to be anything other than that- trivial.

"Why? Because you wouldn't let them? Because they got tired of waiting around for you to let them in? To give them pieces of yourself?"

"Because I didn't want them to be a bigger part of my life, Renny. Not every woman needs to have a man all the time. I have gotten along without one just fine for a long time."

"Sure, baby, but why the fuck would you ever settle for 'just fine' when you could have more?"

"Have more... what? This? Arguing?" I shot back. "This is so much fun and so damn fulfilling!" I added dryly.

"It's fucking real at least," Renny countered. "It's not carefully chosen words that fit the carefully constructed puzzle you want your life to be, everything neat and tidy and in its place."

"It's ugly," I said, shaking my head. "You see that you did that, right?" I asked, swallowing back a sob that tried to escape me. "You took something that had been nice, it had been good and kind and mutually beneficial, and you made it something else entirely."

"I didn't want fucking nice from you, Mina. I didn't want you because of your perfections. I wanted you because I just fucking wanted you, flaws and all. But you wouldn't give them to me. You wouldn't trust me with the things that matter to you."

"You don't under..."

"I don't understand?" he snapped, pushing off the fence and towering over me. "I gave you the whole sordid story of my upbringing. You know shit that I have never told another fucking soul before. You got all my flaws, all my ugly. I trusted you with that. And you wouldn't give me the chance to show you that you could trust me with yours."

"So you... what? You forced me to? You dug up my parents and you dragged them out here and you dangled them in front of me and you made me go in there completely unprepared. I haven't seen them in eight years, Renny! Don't you think I maybe had my reasons? Don't you think I, I don't know, maybe would have liked to have brushed my goddamn teeth and straightened my fucking hair before I saw them again and not gone in there in leggings some teenager would wear that my mother was silently judging me for from the second I walked in that door?"

"Mina, calm down," he said, voice low and soothing and it was just about then that I realized all the probates had walked outside at the very loud scene I was suddenly making.

"Don't tell me to calm down. Don't tell me that I am overreacting. How would you like it if I found your parents and dragged them here? If maybe I fished out a copy of Raising Renny and got to know everything you never wanted anyone to know and then used those facts to get a rise out of you? How would you like that? You know exactly what you would have done, exactly what I am..."